


you won't let go of anything you hold

by forcynics



Series: vampire diaries ficathon fills [6]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Jealousy, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-26
Updated: 2011-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-24 02:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6138934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcynics/pseuds/forcynics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants to be the hero in this story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you won't let go of anything you hold

 

 

 

He wants to be the hero in this story.

And maybe that’s what makes it all so tragic. He was always supposed to be the hero. She loved Stefan but she told him she loved him too. He never needed to be compelled; he was always willing. Anything for her. He lived for her and he died for her. And knowing that she was in the tomb, that she was still alive? That was his secret, the secret he kept buried right above his heart for a hundred a forty-five years, a secret even Stefan could never know, because it was _his_ turn to be the hero.

They say the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference, and he thinks that must be true. Surely even Katherine hating him couldn’t compare to finding out that he was so utterly insignificant to her, that she didn’t care at all?

He doesn’t want to believe it, offers her a chance to take it back, pretend that none of it happened, if she’ll only tell him the truth he so desperately needs to hear, if she’ll only tell him that it was real, _she loved him_. In return, he gets “It was always Stefan”.

There’s a part of him that isn’t surprised, that can’t be surprised, because Stefan’s always the hero.

He runs to Elena, because _she_ has to care, she can’t deny whatever it is that they have between them, she _can’t_ , because what else does he have? He has nothing; she makes that clear with “I love Stefan. It will _always_ be Stefan.”

Jeremy is there and he doesn’t think before snapping the kid’s neck, because it’s Elena brother, because Elena deserves to feel some ounce of the pain that he’s shouldering.

Because if everyone’s already decided that he’s the villain, never the hero, why shouldn’t he at least live up to that?

 

 

 

He planned to kill her. They were supposed to kill her, he wanted her _dead_. As if revenge would solve anything, as if killing her would even things out between them. But he’s prepared to drive a stake through her pretty little heart anyways, because what else is left to him?

He wants her dead because he hates her, and he wants her dead because he’s afraid, afraid that there’s a part of him that still loves her. He doesn’t know if he knows how to not love her after so long. But he hates himself for it.

She isn’t killed, though. Merely taken down the tomb, and he’s the one to do it. He locks her in, locks her in the tomb he spent so many years trying to free her from. Irony’s a bitch.

The hero was supposed to free Katherine; the villain locks her up.

Except tonight he thinks that he had it backwards, he had everything backwards all along.

But that doesn’t make it any easier for him to close the stone slab over her shrieks of protests and her pleas, “Damon!”. Because there _is_ a part of him that will always love her, see, and he doesn’t know whether that tips the scales in favour of hero or villain.

He walks away, and with every step imagines if only she’d been in that tomb for the past century and half and all he had to do was turn around now and save her, save the Katherine that was supposed to love him but never did.

 

 

 

It takes him a while to realize, when she tricks her way out of the tomb, that he’s not surprised. Of course Katherine would find her way back into his life. Of course there will never be any escaping her.

He _is_ surprised that she still manages to hurt him with her words, that the constant choosing of Stefan over him hasn’t gotten old, that it still stings to be reminded that he is not the good one.

She likes to dig the blade in deeper and deeper, Katherine.

She doesn’t bat an eye when she tells him she was prepared to have him die if it meant her getting out of the tomb.

He holds his tongue, but wants to tell her that once upon a time he _did_ die for her, and would have died again and again to get her out of that very same tomb.

Yes, irony is most definitely a bitch.

Or maybe that’s just Katherine.

 

 

 

He’s not prepared for the little pang when she saunters into his bedroom with her hair in proper curls again, looking every bit _Katherine_ and not at all Elena. He’s terrible at the whole indifference thing.

She creeps up his bed, toying little smile on her face – the one he recognizes so well. It would be easy to give in, easy to pretend that she always loved him, pretend, pretend, pretend. The part of him that doesn’t know how to not love her will always find it easy to forgive where Katherine is concerned, because it’s still willing to sacrifice anything for her.

He doesn’t know how she does it – expects anything from him after everything she told him so easily, carelessly. Maybe she too knows that there’s that part of him that still exists.

He opens his mouth to tell her to leave, make it clear that he’s not interested.

But when she presses her soft, little mouth against his, and straddles him like that, it’s that one tiny part of him that’s suddenly roaring and drowning everything else out. Then he’s doing the unthinkable, fisting a hand in her thick curls, digging his fingers into his waist as he pulls her tightly against him, parting her lips with his own, and _giving in_.

She’s ripping his shirt off him, and then working at his belt with her quick fingers, and he’s unclasping her bra, lacy and black, and sliding it off. And then somehow, somehow, their clothes have disappeared altogether as they sink back against the mattress, and he knows this shouldn’t be happening, feels her smirking against his lips, but he also knows the one truth he cannot shake, hero or villain.

He hates it, she knows it, and he hates that she knows it:

_He will always be hers._

 

 

 


End file.
